Two Save The Bay swims a lifetime apart for Colette Rossiter

It has been 10 years, and perhaps a lifetime, since former competitive swimmer Colette Rossiter took part in her first Save The Bay Swim.

The decade between then and now, with her second attempt at the 1.7-mile swim, has been mostly consumed by Rossiter’s battle with Lyme disease and, then, a stroke.

“Lyme is worse,” she says, noting it took three years, from 2004 to 2007, for doctors to diagnose that the fatigue and irregular heartbeat she was experiencing was from central-nervous system Lyme disease. She thinks she got the disease from a tick bite while walking her dog near her Wakefield home.